Calamity's Answers As Seen Through Eternity's Keyhole

J. Fred Hughes entered the University of Cincinnati by competitive academic scholarship. The US Air Force was offering flight training and an officer's rating to two-year math/science majors. Hughes was accepted intoflight school in Waco, Texas, but a growing conviction against murder forced him to abandon that offer. He graduated at UC with a five-year degree in mechanical engineering and took his first professional employment with Mullins Manufacturing Corporation. They were building a manufacturing plant for the US Navy to produce 105 mm shells by coldextrusion for the Navy's four-inch guns.


During this time, study with a former pastor from western Pennsylvania answered serious philosophical questions for Hughes that evolution did not address. Hughes decided to resign his engineering post and enrolled in an undergraduate program in a small missionary college in Takoma Park, Maryland, after studying with the pastor for a year. That same year, he was accepted to study theology at Potomac University in Washington, DC, even though his undergraduate work was in math and science rather than theology.


Each of us has, or will have a raging-even devastating-encounter with calamity. Homespun"theology" usually puts the blame on God for these unwanted agonies, pains, or disasters. In the process, our faith may strengthen or be seriously diminished. Another option is a "street smart"mental package, frozen in time that defines a primitive locked-down image of God.


With the biblical book of Job as central, foundational, and pivotal to his argument, the author presents answers that do not do injustice to God. The context of the entire Bible is held in balance as God's love and methods are presented as being symmetrical with his long-range planning for each of us.


Freedom of the "will" of every intelligent creature in the entire universe is the major premise; why God uses the self-limiting principle of love, and that in the context of his intimate battle with evil, shows his awesomeness. This book brings forth overarching truths that bind together a God big enough to run the universe and close enough to walk with us through the dark valley of the shadows.